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Topic: Here to learn (Read 285 times)

It was a dark and stormy ... time ... when I lived in central Texas and the only silver lining to that cloud was that I found a home brewer’s supply store ( Barley and Hops, Copperas Cove ) and met George. He was so patient with me when I walked in with the ingredient list for a knock-off St. Bernardus Abt. 12. He quickly realized that I had the passion, but lacked some basic knowledge. I saw no reason why my first beer shouldn’t have been an all-grain Belgian Quad. After talking for a bit, I walked out with a LME kit and the infamous beginner’s brewing kit with the plastic 5-gallon buckets. My beer was going to be the bomb-diggity. People would come from miles around to taste my beer. That first batch failed, per brewer’s error somewhere along the way. I went back to the store to buy a second LME kit and George had compassion on me and just gave me a kit, saying: "You can’t have your first batch be a bad batch." Thanks, George!

Fast forward 4 years to 2018, I’ve since moved to rural southern Illinois and now having taught my buddy, Phil, how to brew only a mere year ago, we have over a half dozen batches under our belts and learning all the time! We moved from his garage to his screened-in porch he’s dedicated to be the brew room. (Pics: Google Photos Album; 1/2 dozen images) We’ve begun tasting all beers with a beer tasting sheet/form I found online, which has helped us immensely in deciphering what our taste buds are perceiving aiding us both in our home brews as well as appreciation and understanding when drinking commercial beers.

Our setup is pretty straight forward with kettle & turkey fryer. Perhaps one thing we customized in the process is having a submerged pond pump in an ice bath with rock salt to run through the wort chiller and a second ice bath with rock salt to set the kettle in post-boil. We’ve got our chill time down to single digit minutes on our wort @ 212F to 68F. We have moved away from bottles to kegging. This year, we’ll convert the reach-in fridge to a keezer.

Other:I’m a mixed media fine-art artist. Link listed on my member profile. I also own a PrePacked DIY website template company called Hall of Webz. Google knows about it.

Thanks, Robert! In addition, I also wanted to clarify the LME brew kit fact so people didn't think I was smarter than I am, especially when I start asking simple questions. lol Cheers!

I started brewing almost 30 years ago, and I say you're wise, because (not knowing what I was doing) I just jumped in the deep end. Therefore I spent a long time not knowing what I was doing! It's like scientific method, add or change one element at a time and you'll understand the result. And you're in a good place for any questions. I only joined the forum fairly recently, and I've learned a lot myself at my level, as well as realizing just how much I'd already learned and could share with others.

Thanks, Robert! In addition, I also wanted to clarify the LME brew kit fact so people didn't think I was smarter than I am, especially when I start asking simple questions. lol Cheers!

I started brewing almost 30 years ago, and I say you're wise, because (not knowing what I was doing) I just jumped in the deep end. Therefore I spent a long time not knowing what I was doing! It's like scientific method, add or change one element at a time and you'll understand the result. And you're in a good place for any questions. I only joined the forum fairly recently, and I've learned a lot myself at my level, as well as realizing just how much I'd already learned and could share with others.

I wish there was a way to give a +1 to replies (as either an acknowledgement or a thumbs up). I'm gonna go have to add this to the suggestion list for new forum features.